Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • The Problem with Church Debates

    It hit me on Sunday as I was listening to a fine sermon for Pentecost at my home church, First United Methodist Church of Pensacola. Rev. Bob Sweet was enumerating a number of things the Holy Spirit might do for us, changes we should all make. A number of his points elicited laughter, because we all felt a bit guilty. Then he hit “stop gossiping.” This time the laughter was loud and noticeably nervous. You know why? Because everyone knew we weren’t going to stop gossiping.

    And then it hit me. The real problem with our church debates is that most of us know we’re debating the meaning of divine commands which we have no real intention of obeying anyhow. I’m not talking about things we disagree with, so we don’t do. I’m talking about things we all agree we ought to do, but never get around to doing.

    Those are the things I need to look at in my own life. What about you?

  • What Am I Doing?

    What’s that picture?greek grammar layout

    I’m glad you asked. That’s my computer with layout work for the forthcoming Spanish translation of Dave Black’s Greek grammar. It’s an interesting bit of work. I was thinking yesterday that it doesn’t get much tougher than this, but then I recall working in graduate school on translating Akkadian into English using an Akkadian-German lexicon. Not to mention that while I had an introductory grammar in English, my best reference for grammar was also in German.

    I’m looking forward to releasing this, not least because it’s always better to look back with a sense of accomplishment than forward looking for the finish line!

  • In the Confessions of Category

    9781631990397fWe didn’t plan it this way, but my friend and Energion author Dave Black now has a book with a subtitle that begins with “Confessions of …” So what do I mean “not planned” and why is this significant? Well, I wrote a book several years ago, and the subtitle began with “Confessions of …” Not an earth shattering coincidence, but interesting. But it wasn’t planned. In fact, we held a contest for the book title, so you can blame Mark Stevens, who won a free copy of the book for his winning title suggestion.

    Oh, I forgot. Dave’s book is titled It’s All Greek to Me: Confessions of an Unlikely Academic. Mine is titled Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic. Of course, “liberal charismatic” and “unlikely academic” are not all that similar.

    I’m going to have to include the back cover below for those of you who want to track down the Greek text that forms the background.

    I’ve gotten a few questions as to why I publish this sort of book. “What sort of book is that?” I’m glad you asked! I’m talking about the memoir, or personal testimony sort of book. A book that tells something about how God has led in the author’s life. I’ve even created a new category over on our Energion Direct web site for testimonies. I consider Psalm 78:1-7 a sort of theme text for my own ministry. I learned to love the Scriptures from my parents who studied it. I hope I will pass that love on to my children. I think it is often more important for people to know what sort of person an author is than what they say. I know this sounds odd coming from someone who publishes books that generally argue one or another point of view. But you see it’s more important to me that my authors are writing about things they care about and truly believe in than how well known they are.

    But there’s an additional, personal factor with this particular book. Becoming publisher for some of Dave Black’s books was a surprise to me. It started because one of my authors at the time—and I didn’t have very many—had taken Greek from Dave Black. At the time, Dave had written and had published more books than there were in the Energion catalog. But he entrusted his manuscript for The Jesus Paradigm to my little company.

    Let me say something about that manuscript. I have a mental list of books that I think should be getting more attention than they have. I regularly wonder what I can do to bring more attention to them. The Jesus Paradigm is one of those books. More people need ot read it. It will challenge the way we organize our lives and the way we do church. One pastor who read it said with some concern, “This guy is trying to run me out of a job!” Just so! Jesus didn’t die so professional Christians could have jobs. I’m not saying here that there should be no Christians paid to do the work of ministry. I don’t know how many should, but one thing I do know. I know that many, many more unpaid Christians should be doing the work of ministry.

    Since I published that manuscript Dave and I have become good friends. Many people think it is an unlikely friendship. A Southern Baptist professor and a Methodist who embraces the title “liberal charismatic”? It may seem odd, but it shouldn’t. Dave is one of those many people I know for whom the kingdom of God is central. We have Jesus!

    More importantly he’s very transparent, he means what he says, and he’s ready to listen to disagreements. You can have an excellent discussion with him at just about any moment. And for my more liberal friends who wonder, let me note that I’ve never heard Dave respond to an issue of interpretation by citing his own theology or tradition. He always argues facts and the text. You can disagree, but you’re going to have to deal with the data.

    I’m not going to try to explain friendship. I like being an unlikely friend and having unlikely friends. I’m just not sure what makes a friendship “unlikely.” I’m even told my marriage is unlikely, but it seems pretty likely to me.

    So consider reading this little book. It’s just $3.99, and I had a lot of fun creating the cover. So here’s the back cover. Enjoy!

    9781631990397b

     

  • Meditations on According to John

    Meditations on According to JohnAnyone who has made a serious effort to teach from the Gospel of John has likely experienced the difficulty of giving people a clear picture of the connections between various parts of the book, not to mention the frequent allusions to passages in the Hebrew scriptures. One can easily run out of fingers to “hold that passage” while one flips to another in order to compare. The difficulty is that one needs to get an overview of the entire book before one can truly comprehend the individual parts, and people rarely study Bible books in that way. Too frequently they jump into a passage on a particular topic from the middle of the book, and the Lectionary encourages this, and never really get a full picture.

    So I was delighted to get a manuscript from Herold Weiss, at one time a professor at my alma mater, Andrews University, and later at St Mary’s College, Notre Dame titled Meditations on According to John. Editors generally look with some disfavor on collections of essays, meditations or sermons. I’ve had to reject not a few such collections. They often don’t sell. One of the reasons they don’t is that people rarely read sermons by anyone who is not famous. They tend to prefer books that cover a particular topic in some detail than a collection of different thoughts.

    But this book is not that sort of collection. It does not consist of unrelated thoughts that have no particular sequence. Rather, the 24 meditations on this book take particular passages in the gospel of John, According to John as Dr. Weiss likes to call it following the Greek title, and then fits them into the scheme of the entire book. I like to invite people to read a Bible book multiple times in order to get an overview. With this book, you get that sort of an overview multiple times, each with a different theme.

    The gospel of John is extremely simple on the one hand, but very challenging on the other. The language is easy to understand at the basic level. But as you meditate further it tends to grow on you and make you think again … and again and again.

    I think I have an excellent group of authors represented in the Energion Publications catalog. I have a long list of books I want to write about, but haven’t had time. Sometimes these books challenge me. Sometimes I am simply saying, “Yes, that was a good presentation of the _____ topic, and people should read it.” But some books stand out in that they inspire me to study as I read the manuscripts as an editor. This one had be referencing my Greek New Testament frequently, and eventually had me re-reading the entire gospel in Greek just to follow some of the thoughts presented.

    You may agree or disagree with some of the conclusions. For example, Dr. Weiss does not accept this gospel as the source of sacramental theology:

    The sacraments were established toward the end of the first century when Christianity was becoming institutionalized and starting to create official channels through which the Holy Spirit could flow under ecclesiastical control. (p. 152)

    and

    It is a bit disconcerting, therefore, to find that most commentators consider this gospel as the New Testament document that provides the basic source for sacramental theology. This judgment is based on interpretations which see the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus as supporting the sacrament of baptism, and the discourse following the feeding of the five thousand as supporting the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The texts, however, do not support these interpretations. (p. 152)

    Now that will annoy a number of my friends! A bit later Dr. Weiss says:

    In According to John Jesus is not baptized, does not celebrate a Lord’s Supper, and does not institute bread and wine as sacraments that need to be administered by authorized clergy. Jesus only institutes the washing of the feet which must be administered by everyone to everyone, in this way democratizing the kingdom of heaven. (pp. 156-157)

    That, I think, is worth discussing. Why is it that only authorized clergy can administer sacraments? I know the theology, but is it well rooted?

    In any case, both reading this book and reading John after reading this book have been beneficial experiences for me. I strongly commend this one to my friends who are interested in either biblical studies or theology. It’s a great text.

     

  • In the UMC Debate, Keep This in Mind

    … from Joel Watts on Maxie Dunnam.

  • In Which I Question My #UMC Membership Vows

    There’s been a great deal of talk about schism in the United Methodist Church (#UMC) over the last couple of days. It hasn’t disturbed me in the way it has disturbed many of my friends, but it has made me ask this question: Why?

    No, not why might we have schism. Why don’t I care more?

    I’ve said before that if I left the UMC, it would doubtless have something to do with apportionments. I don’t have a problem with the basic concept, and unlike many, my problem is not that some of my apportionments might support someone who takes some particular stance on homosexuality. I’m sorry, but in a complacent, self-satisfied, rich, apathetic, and unaware American church, a church that is spending much more on maintaining its institutions than on building the kingdom of God, I can’t convince myself that homosexuality is the most important issue we have. How we treat other people, yes. Institutional rules, no.

    Here’s an example. Via Allan Bevere (also an Energion author), I discovered the suggestion that the United Methodist Church officially embrace the Nicene Creed, which we apparently don’t. The problem? It would take us a minimum of eight years to accomplish this mission. Then we’d be protected from false doctrine, like all the other churches who embrace the Nicene Creed. Oops!

    Don’t get me wrong. I do, in fact, embrace that creed. I’m just thinking that having our general conference debate the issue for the next 8+ years isn’t really going to help us much.

    I think it’s my view of denominations. I think denominations are should be a good way for us to group our resources so we can be more effective in building the kingdom of God. Single congregations have some limitations in terms of resources, so they need to work together. I didn’t (and don’t) think it’s necessary or good for all our connections to be within our denomination. I don’t think it’s a good thing when we build our denomination instead of building the kingdom. I think that the amount of time, effort, and money, not to mention words, that is spent on institutional issues indicates that our priorities are not right.

    The question I’d ask about schism in the UMC is this: How can we get on with the work of the gospel with the least disruption?

    Let’s forget about who owns buildings, and who we like and who we don’t. Go about it in a Christ-like manner. Let people form the institutions they think they need. I personally doubt I’d like either half of a split UMC, but I don’t have to like it. I just have to find the place God calls me to minister. It’s as likely I could find a congregation where God called me to be after as before.

    And if you don’t mind, I’m a Christian first and a member of a United Methodist congregation second. As a Christian, I’m going to go right on embracing the Nicene Creed. Don’t go it alone? I’m not. There are hundreds of millions of Christians who do so along with me. We don’t need another eight year debate.

    That’s my primary loyalty. To the gospel. As long as I’m a part of a United Methodist congregation, I’ll support it with my prayers, presences, gifts, service, and witness. But if God calls or the institution falls, I’ll go right on following where the Lord leads as best as I can.

  • A Muslim Comment on the Mariam Yahya Ibrahim Ishag Case

    From time to time I hear the question regarding some act of terrorism, or by some act of a Muslim government: Where is the Muslim outrage?

    I first want to note that I find measuring online outrage to be a somewhat hopeless task. I am outraged at many things that I never manage to mention on my blog. My blogging has a great deal more to do with my current schedule than with my state of outrage.

    But I do want to call an article, Sudan Government Tells Young Christian Woman to Recant or Die, written by Harris Zafar. To quote, regarding her sentence:

    As a human of conscience, I see this as a clear violation of fundamental human rights. Moreover, as an Ahmadi Muslim, I find the actions of Sudan’s government incredibly disturbing. They claim not only to be administering Shariah Law that is allegedly a 100% Islamic constitution, but also that “it is not allowed at all for a Muslim to change his religion.”

    I found the entire article extremely interesting.

  • From My Editing Work: Greater Works

    From my reading in Meditations on According to John (forthcoming next week) by Herold Weiss, pp. 91, 92:

    … Jesus’ work was consummated when he was lifted up, on the third day, on the cross.

    It is, therefore, somewhat disconcerting to read the promise Jesus makes to those who believe in him: “He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and even greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father” (14:12). The work of Jesus was to enact the sign of Jonah by living to do the will of God, something that Jonah had much difficulty in understanding and accepting. By contrast, Jesus understood and fully accepted the purpose of his life. He accomplished the work he was assigned. At the end he was able to truthfully say, “It is finished”. What greater work can be done by the one who believes in him? I don’t think the members of the Johannine community supposed that they would be performing miracles (dynamis) greater than those Jesus had performed. Rather, they saw themselves as witnesses to The Truth and understood that their hour would also come. At that time they would have to work out the sign that points to the work of the one glorified on the cross. Their food, that which sustained their lives, was their determination to transpose the words that Jesus had spoken to them into life-giving works. For them, his words were “spirit and life” (6:63) when incarnated into their lives. They were to give signs that called attention to the one who was in “the heart of the earth” for three days. In the lives of the faithful the connection of their works to their ultimate purpose in life must not be ambiguous.

    Jesus lived performing signs that pointed to the time when he would finish his work. Therefore the life of the Christian must provide signs that advertise the source of strength and vision for those who live by faith. Signs and faith must remain closely bound in the lives of the disciples of the one who is THE SIGN that must be seen and believed.

  • To a Generation yet to Be Born

    To a Generation yet to Be Born

    image

    This is my mother, who will be 96 at the end of May. She’s looking over a book titled Seeing the Psalter. She spent a good hour with it, commenting on methodology and various translations.

    How can she do this? Well, after years as a missionary nurse, she decided to take Hebrew and completed two years. She then taught herself Greek, with a little (remarkably little) help from me.

    She and my dad both passed on their love of Scripture to me. That’s Psalm 78:1-7 in action.

    When she was done looking over the book she took out some sheet music, went to the electronic keyboard and said, “Let’s have worship!” She led our small group of family and we shared God’s wonderful deeds (see Psalm 78 again).

    That’s how you share faith from one generation to the next.

  • Remembering Becky Lynn Black

    image

    As I’m sitting here on the porch at Dave Black’s place ther is one disappointment. I didnt come here earlier so that I could have met Becky Lynn.

    I feel like I know her from correspondence and from her book. She had an enormous impact on so many lives over the years.

    Might I commend to you her autobiography, which I published? It was the way I got to know her. I know she was a remarkable lady!

    P.S. I originally scheduled this for Monday morning, but it somehow failed to post.